Crescendo: The Journey

I will always maintain that the journey is the most important part of a fantasy story because it’s the way the reader gets to know the setting. Immersion is king in fantasy, and what gets you immersed better than seeing the countryside and how it operates? I’d put a journey mechanic above just about everything else in a fantasy, and that arguably includes even a basic resolution mechanic!

So yes, Crescendo has a Journey mechanic. But in order to understand why it works so well we have to cover several unique mechanics in Crescendo and how the Journey utilizes them. 

First off there’s the Locale. A Locale is a discrete chunk of the setting. Some power dynamics and the basic concept of the place are part of a Locale, but the most important part of the Locale is its History: the significant events that have happened there.

And then there’s the journaling: everyone in a game of Crescendo has a journal they are responsible for. There’s various prompts for writing in it, and there’s times you’re expected to reference it: open to a page you know has writing, close your eyes, and put your finger down on the page. You read that aloud. So does everyone else. The GM then assembles the prompts into whatever he needs for that moment. Others can make you write their actions into your journal, and there’s a bunch of mechanics where lore is made up and then written in too.

The next piece of the puzzle is The Black Swan. A Black Swan looks like a twist, but is really someone else’s story coming out of the blue and smacking into yours; you get a chance to change the Black Swan, in an intense series of rolls that can truly change things, forever. Black Swans are always based off the History of the Locale you’re in, and are generated by Hitting the Books. So basically the world butts its head in on your situation and you have to respond or lose something of yours. It’s an intense mechanic. And most of the time it can be avoided.

Excerpt during journeys. Then that crap finds you. A lot. And all you can really do is navigate it the best you can.

What comes out isn’t a series of random encounters, but an organic evolution of the setting. Because the events generated are from the journals y’all have put so much into the Black Swans are always an evolution of what came before. It feels like there are multiple stories happenings around you that you’re only JUST privy to. The world feels alive, like it has its own purpose… which you just interrupted. And, since the journals get updated with these events, it means they’ll come back, and almost never where and when you expect them to. This takes a tremendous amount of work off the GM’s shoulders, allowing him to find out what happens at the same time the players do!

Crescendo has a unique Journey mechanic. It allows the stories of the word to really come to the forefront, impacting the players’ characters in unexpected ways… which then makes the story richer. All without having to occupy the GM’s brain. Because of how coherent the journals make twists it’s east for the GM to generate situations that not only challenge the players, but do so in a way that makes the world feel alive.